By prioritizing politics over science, the U.S. continues down a perilous, but familiar, path that is rooted in its racist history.
Last month the Supreme Court decided in favor of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine (AHM) to maintain FDA approval of mifepristone. This drug is used in most medication abortions in the United States. The court’s decision ensures that scientists at the FDA control the regulatory system for medications in the U.S., instead of judges or politicians. Within the same month, the Supreme Court dismissed Idaho v. United States, and upheld the right of all people to quality emergency medical care. But, similarly to FDA v. AHM, this is only a temporary reprieve for abortion access and is far from an overwhelming victory.
Abortion legislation in the U.S. has been motivated by political and economic ends, rather than health and safety. We’ve learned that nothing is guaranteed, and more threats to abortion are looming in courts across the country.
AHM v. FDA was a horrifying example of a politically motivated attack on reproductive rights and bodily autonomy that not only ignores scientific evidence but actively seeks to undermine it. Decades of clinical and epidemiologic evidence documenting the experiences of millions of people over a quarter century have definitively demonstrated the safety and effectiveness of abortion medication. Nevertheless, the plaintiffs in AHM argued that the FDA acted outside of its authority when it first approved mifepristone in 2000, and again when it expanded access to mifepristone in 2016 and 2019—falsely claiming that the FDA relied on flawed safety and efficacy data.
Abortion legislation in the U.S. has been motivated by political and economic ends, rather than health and safety.
Despite an overwhelming scientific consensus that both mifepristone and misoprostol are safe and effective medications, the Supreme Court case has created confusion around the safety and effectiveness of these medications. It also opened the door to further attacks on access to abortion medication across the country.
With Idaho v. United States, we found ourselves inches from another catastrophic blow to reproductive health care. The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), a federal law in place to provide patients with life-saving and stabilizing care, includes abortions. Idaho attempted to undermine this act and ban emergency procedures for abortion, disregarding the patient’s life and health. Despite the case’s dismissal, pregnant people in Idaho and across the country still face threats that could prevent them from receiving life-saving abortion care.
These attacks on abortion are stripping away access to reproductive health care state by state. Just a few weeks ago, the governor of Louisiana signed a bill into law that classified mifepristone and misoprostol as Schedule IV “controlled dangerous substances”—a designation that is intended to be reserved for medications that are subject to abuse/addiction. These medications are not only used for abortions, but also for miscarriage management, labor induction, prevention of postpartum hemorrhage, and more.
This law does nothing to protect health. Instead, it restricts access to these safe and effective medications in a state that has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country. At the same time, it also isolates pregnant people by criminalizing those who would seek to help them. Such attacks on health care disproportionately impact communities that already face the highest barriers to care, and who are often at the highest risk of criminalization.
The governor of Louisiana signed a bill into law that classified mifepristone and misoprostol as Schedule IV “controlled dangerous substances”…restrict[ing] access to safe and effective medications in a state that has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country.
Abortion legislation in the U.S. has, from the outset, been motivated by political and economic ends, rather than health and safety. The first abortion laws were passed in the U.S. in the 1860s to protect the economic interests of physicians. At the time, the profession was almost exclusively comprised of white men who wanted to keep midwives, a racially diverse, female-dominated profession, from encroaching on work that the physicians viewed as potentially lucrative. Similarly, abortion restrictions today do nothing to protect the health of pregnancy-capable people. Instead, they have had a devastating impact on all aspects of pregnancy-related care.
By prioritizing politics over science, the U.S. continues down a perilous, but familiar, path that is rooted in its racist history. This path has led to a landscape where gender-affirming care is criminalized, contraception is increasingly difficult to access and abortion is all but impossible in large swaths of the country. Yet, clinicians are unable to provide standard prenatal and safe childbirth care for fear of running afoul of abortion restrictions imposed by the state.
Abortion restrictions today do nothing to protect the health of pregnancy-capable people. Instead, they have had a devastating impact on all aspects of pregnancy-related care.
For some, the decisions in Idaho v. United States and AHM v. FDA might seem heartening. We agree that there are glimmers of hope, but the reality is that the lives of pregnant people are at stake. These attacks on essential health care will continue at the state level, and will continue to put the lives of pregnant people at risk and threaten the inherent right to bodily autonomy we all deserve. Looking ahead, we must continue to fight to ensure that medical standards and scientific evidence, not politics, drive reproductive health care policies.
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